Eichel hungry for another Stanley Cup championship with Golden Knights

Jack Eichel stood in the front yard with his family one morning this summer when a car arrived with the Stanley Cup.

It was in that house in North Chelmsford, Massachusetts, where he had posters on his bedroom walls -- Pavel Bure, Joe Sakic and Steve Yzerman in the early years, Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin later.

It was on that cul-de-sac where he’d skate circles on in-line skates, shoot into a street hockey net and play with the other neighborhood kids.

Now he had won the Cup with the Vegas Golden Knights, a dream come true.

“You think about everything -- your whole life living there and all the memories you have,” the 26-year-old center said last month. “Just being able to stand in my front yard with my mom and my dad and my sister, that was a pretty special moment.

“I was trying not to get a little emotional. A lot of things go through your head.”

Imagine the emotion when the Golden Knights raise their banner before playing the Seattle Kraken in their season opener at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Tuesday (10:30 p.m. ET; ESPN, ESPN+).

Eichel never appeared in the Stanley Cup Playoffs in six seasons with the Buffalo Sabres, who selected him No. 2 in the 2015 NHL Draft.

He wanted to have a disk replacement surgery that had never been done on an NHL player. The Sabres traded him to the Golden Knights on Nov. 4, 2021, and he had the surgery eight days later.

He returned Feb. 16, 2022, only to miss the playoffs again.

Then everything came together last season.

Eichel led Vegas with 66 points (27 goals, 39 assists) in 67 games in the regular season and 26 points (six goals, 20 assists) in 22 games on their championship run.

“When people start questioning your character and who you are as a person and they’re taking shots at you, yeah, I mean, it’s tough to not hear some of that and for it not to bother you a bit,” he said.

“So, maybe to be on the other side of that and not feel like people are saying that anymore, it’s good. You put a lot of things to rest. It kind of allows you to just relax again and not worry about all that and feel good about yourself.”

Eichel is in a good place now, in more ways than one.

In Buffalo, he didn’t have a strong supporting cast and had to carry the load offensively. He put up numbers -- including NHL career highs in goals (36) in 68 games in 2019-20 and assists (54) and points (82) in 77 games in 2018-19 -- without team success.

In Vegas, he’s on a deep, structured team. He’s excellent on both ends of the ice.

“When you look around the room and have confidence in all those guys, I think it takes a little bit of pressure off yourself,” he said. “You don’t feel like you need to go out there and do anything spectacular. You can just play.

“And I think that allows for more instinctual play and just being a little more relaxed, not feeling the pressure of, ‘OK, I have to do this tonight.’ You know what I mean? Like, ‘OK, I can just play within the structure of our group and play my game and contribute when I can.’”

Eichel could play an even larger role this season.

Coach Bruce Cassidy said he wants to use him more on the penalty kill to win the first face-off and to break up plays with his strong stick. He wants him to take control of the power play and raise its pace. And he wants him to shoot more often.

“He has one of the better shots on our team, too, and he likes to defer sometimes and make the play,” Cassidy said. “He’s a center. I get all that. I just think he’s got a dangerous shot, and he could use it a little more often to keep teams honest.”

The Golden Knights return almost the entire roster that won the Cup last season. They know how to win, and they’re motivated to win again.

“There’s no lack of hunger,” Eichel said. “I mean, think about it. Think about how many guys had won on our team previously last year. Going through it, it seemed like they were hungrier than they ever were.”

Most notably, defenseman Alec Martinez had won the Cup with the Los Angeles Kings in 2012 and 2014. Center Chandler Stephenson won it with the Washington Capitals in 2018. Defenseman Alex Pietrangelo and forward Ivan Barbashev won it with the St. Louis Blues in 2019.

“These guys have won, and all they want to do is win again, right?” Eichel said. “Because they know that feeling.”

Now Eichel and the rest of his teammates know it too.

“Having a full team of guys that understand that feeling of what it’s like to win,” he said, “I think it should be really easy to be hungry and want to prove ourselves again.”